If you want to know what people think, just ask them. And don’t be surprised when their position is the exact opposite of what gets pushed in Washington D.C.
For example, here in rural America, nobody wants an electric vehicle.
Maybe “nobody” is too strong of a word. There are a lot of people in rural America.
But nobody I’ve talked to—and I like to talk—wants one.
There are a lot of wide open spaces in the Midwest. It can easily be a 30 mile roundtrip to a grocery store or a school. Any decent-sized shopping center or major hospital could be a 100-150 mile roundtrip.
And there just aren’t sufficient charging stations in the Midwest. S & P Global Mobility, provider of automotive data and analysis, estimated that charging stations must be quadrupled between 2022 and 2025 in order to conveniently handle the needs of electric vehicles on the road, and the number must increase eight-fold by 2030.
I recently purchased a vehicle from a nearby dealership that had zero electric vehicles on the lot. While he was completing the paperwork on my new-to-me 2020 Ford Edge Titanium, we talked about EVs. He recently took his family on a wonderful road trip with a standard internal combustion engine vehicle and saw a big chunk of this beautiful country. They left Northeast Iowa and headed toward Niagara Falls. From there, they went on to Acadia National Park in Maine. They traveled through the southern part of Canada and made their way back to Iowa. They had a great trip but were glad to get home. He had a job to get back to, and the family had other obligations. He’s a numbers guy and reflected on his trip, wondering how it would have gone with an electric vehicle. He retraced his path and identified where charging stations were available. Because of the limited range of EVs, the limited availability of charging stations, and the lengthy time requirement to charge, he figured his road trip would have taken an extra eight days to complete.
Nobody I know has eight vacation days to give to an electric vehicle.
The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021 includes $7.5 billion in subsidies for 500,000 new EV charging stations. For starters, 500,000 aren’t enough. But we just closed out 2023, and not a single station had been built yet.
There’s a definite trust issue from Midwesterners when it comes to the federal government accomplishing infrastructure goals—even if you give it $1.2 trillion dollars.
Additionally, cold weather is hard on batteries. It’s the norm and not unusual for winter evenings to dip below zero. And anyone from the heartland will tell you that it’s a myth that winter lasts just three months. Snow can fall on Halloween and not end until Easter. That’s a lot of frustrating days being spent on electric vehicles.
The electric vehicle may have its place, but it doesn’t need to be every place.
The Department of Energy reports that the top three states with electric vehicles are California, Florida and Texas. These states have several, large metropolitan cities located within its borders. The city is one place where electric vehicles can work. If you’re fortunate enough to have a garage, you can charge your vehicle overnight—every night. It would be suitable to zip around a city to get to work and back and to run errands. Think of the electric vehicle as a personal urban taxi. And I’m sure it helps the air quality in these highly congested areas.
Another thing that California, Florida and Texas have going for them is their warm climate. It will be kind to their electric vehicle batteries.
The Biden Administration is pushing too hard in its attempt to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road. If all of this was such a great idea, free markets and supply and demand principles would be making it happen instead of the government subsidizing it with taxpayer dollars.
More time, greater infrastructure, and further innovation are needed before the internal combustion engine takes its last breath, especially in rural America.
Right now, electric vehicles would make life more difficult for country folks.
And nobody I know wants a harder life.
Moving the Conversation Along 